- How long did it take to read? Enjoy, not enjoy? The first time I read this I was in high school. It was like breathing fresh air after spending hours inside a stuffy room. The vibrancy and insistence in Woolf's writing is incredible, almost tactile. I'm torn between praising her writing - magnificent, beautiful, multi-layered, self-aware - and the cause, the meaning within A Room of One's Own. It's a book I always intend to keep on a shelf, wherever I'm living.
- Woolf estimates that there will be a woman-Shakespeare in another century. Why hasn't there been one yet? Even if there was a woman with the same talent, she wouldn't have been given the same opportunities to develop it - no education.
- Women have been creating in different mediums - homemaking, childcare, etc.
- Judith Shakespeare kills herself after doing what her brother did - no female actors until after the Restoration in Britain
- Acting and writing seen as men's professions, so to be a woman in those professions was to want to be near men - and therefore, to be whores.
- Is it important to write like a feminist for Woolf? She wants women to write objectively, like men; to write like a woman, or to write sentimentally, is to let people not take you seriously. "Anybody who writes with a chip on their shoulder, ..." Men also shouldn't write like men because they are doing this in response to the women's movement - and it's scared them. Men established self-confidence by putting down "others" - women, minorities, etc.
- Looks at books about women, written by men, giving information about women - a backlash against the women's movement? Men have sneaked in what they thought of women and their theories of women since people were capable of a system of writing. Every great author (and most of these are men, so far as great writers are acknowledged) has a theory on women, something he or she has concluded through study, experience, and history. Centuries before Woolf, Boccacio wrote The Decameron, in which he writes a number of interesting things to and about women. There are any number of other examples. Women, it is apparent, have always been a subject of controversy with men as well as with each other.
- "Being self-conscious about your gender makes you a lousy writer" - you need to write as a soul and person, not a gender or a category.
- Woolf puts the blame for the state of things on both men and women.
- Gender Essentialism - state of disinterestedness, be free of anger.
- Ch5 - Mary Carmichael
Friday, January 30, 2009
Response to "Rape in Cyberspace"
Did Bungle commit rape? It is amazing that such a weighty question should be hard to answer - or maybe not so much. Bungle might have been a virtual character, and his victims might have been as well, but but his actions were no less harmful, painful, or preventable for not having happened in "real life". His rampage shocked other web users, and their responses mirrored those of victims of sexual abuse and rape. They felt angry, deeply affected, and in need of an answer as to why Bungle did what he did. They were innocent bystanders. Than again, physical rape, or an act of rape in the "real world" instead of the internet, strikes me as more serious. It doesn't just affect the victim's psychological ability, but risks his or her health as well - both of these can have long-term effects in a way that this internet-rape did not. None of the web users Bungle attacked are going to find out they have an STD because of the rape.
Nonetheless, the internet is so ubiquitous, and people's lives become more and more entwined with it, so they should have certain unambiguous rights while online. That includes the courtesies and rights acknowledged in "real life". Whether or not victims should seek the same kind of legal action taken against a "real life" rape, though, I'm not sure about. Punishment is in order, since Bungle abused his right to free speech, but as to what it is I could not begin to say. More knowledge of Habeus Corpus is required.
Nonetheless, the internet is so ubiquitous, and people's lives become more and more entwined with it, so they should have certain unambiguous rights while online. That includes the courtesies and rights acknowledged in "real life". Whether or not victims should seek the same kind of legal action taken against a "real life" rape, though, I'm not sure about. Punishment is in order, since Bungle abused his right to free speech, but as to what it is I could not begin to say. More knowledge of Habeus Corpus is required.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Class Notes on Mary Wollstonecraft
- "Vindication on the Rights of Women":
Wollstonecraft's father was an alcoholic who beat the family.
She took over the care of the family at a young age; she ended up starting a school, and worked as a governess for a while.
Well-educated, mostly self-educated.
At a certain time, she decided to write for a living - a politically radical publisher and bookstore owner supported her.
She wrote one of the first responses to a conservative piece by Edmund Burke where he attacked the French Revolution - "Reflections on the French Revolution", 1789. She published "Vindication of the Rights of Men" anonymously at first, in December 1789 - speaks as if it's written by a man, says Burke writes "effeminately".
"Manly", to her, is synonymous with "virtuous". She argued that it was irrational to distinguish among classes of men - defended liberty, republicanism/democracy.
1792, she published "The Vindication of the Rights of Woman". "Woman" - as an individual, or a category? I think she writes for woman as a category - one including all women, even women she does not know, living in places she's never heard of, and with whom she may not agree on a lot of issues. Most societies have gender inequality in common, with women having fewer acknowledged and supported rights than men.
Writes about "woman" as a class of persons who have been treated the same way by men. "Men" refers to a number of classes, or all human beings.
"Man", as a term used to refer to all people, makes women outside the norm and turns men into the umbrella term for humanity. (<-- one argument against using phrases such as, "All men are created equal", where the word "men" is used to mean all people, women included. As a subtext, it unconsciously communicates that men are (topic of sentence) than women).
Wollstonecraft talks about sexism as systematic, or structural. Society, as a system, through education, trains women not to be virtuous or rational, but sentimental and illogical. In the introduction she says that the weaknesses drilled into women make them tyrants and cunning individuals instead of learning virtue.
Proponent of a Meritocracy - through your merits, talents, achievements are made. Every job involving "subordination is highly injurious to morality". Does this go beyond the traditional workplace - what about teacher/student relations? I can't help but return to a very pragmatic, scientific reading of this idea: people are a species of animals. They are a social species who need other people around to survive. That makes them a group animal. Group animals always have ranks; someone is always subordinate to another, because this system creates an order everyone can adhere to. It's a complex system, but it's one that's easy to indoctrinate people into - just have a baby and raise it in that group. Most mammals are this way.
Does the education system injure morality? (Maybe not in terms of professors and students, but the finances create long-term difficulties).
- p39, writes that several great writers degrade one half the population - they write women this way to make them alluring, sensual.
- p41, "Standing armies..." - talks about soldiers as having lives of gallantry - "taught to please, live to please". Says women and soldiers blindly submit to authority, and both have lives of fun before they learn about virtues. Soldiers ---> women, because of how they're disciplined, educated. THIS PROVES THAT WOMEN ARE NOT NATURALLY INFERIOR.
- p42, Man's ideal for women is "sensual" - all sexual appeal, no lasting substance of character. "What nonsense!"
- Says women aggravate their own situation - they pride themselves on the power they have because of trained weaknesses, deluded by men's romantic, sentimental feelings for them.
- "It is time to effect a revolution in female manners" - time to work and labor. She feels that women take advantage of social inequities because it is easier, and she wants to put a stop to that.
Wollstonecraft herself very strict, virtuous, and rational - believed in absolute transparency, and taking people at their word. Virtue, to her, means total honesty and integrity; a republican definition of the word.
*This makes me think very differently of Western art, especially the female nude.
Wollstonecraft's father was an alcoholic who beat the family.
She took over the care of the family at a young age; she ended up starting a school, and worked as a governess for a while.
Well-educated, mostly self-educated.
At a certain time, she decided to write for a living - a politically radical publisher and bookstore owner supported her.
She wrote one of the first responses to a conservative piece by Edmund Burke where he attacked the French Revolution - "Reflections on the French Revolution", 1789. She published "Vindication of the Rights of Men" anonymously at first, in December 1789 - speaks as if it's written by a man, says Burke writes "effeminately".
"Manly", to her, is synonymous with "virtuous". She argued that it was irrational to distinguish among classes of men - defended liberty, republicanism/democracy.
1792, she published "The Vindication of the Rights of Woman". "Woman" - as an individual, or a category? I think she writes for woman as a category - one including all women, even women she does not know, living in places she's never heard of, and with whom she may not agree on a lot of issues. Most societies have gender inequality in common, with women having fewer acknowledged and supported rights than men.
Writes about "woman" as a class of persons who have been treated the same way by men. "Men" refers to a number of classes, or all human beings.
"Man", as a term used to refer to all people, makes women outside the norm and turns men into the umbrella term for humanity. (<-- one argument against using phrases such as, "All men are created equal", where the word "men" is used to mean all people, women included. As a subtext, it unconsciously communicates that men are (topic of sentence) than women).
Wollstonecraft talks about sexism as systematic, or structural. Society, as a system, through education, trains women not to be virtuous or rational, but sentimental and illogical. In the introduction she says that the weaknesses drilled into women make them tyrants and cunning individuals instead of learning virtue.
Proponent of a Meritocracy - through your merits, talents, achievements are made. Every job involving "subordination is highly injurious to morality". Does this go beyond the traditional workplace - what about teacher/student relations? I can't help but return to a very pragmatic, scientific reading of this idea: people are a species of animals. They are a social species who need other people around to survive. That makes them a group animal. Group animals always have ranks; someone is always subordinate to another, because this system creates an order everyone can adhere to. It's a complex system, but it's one that's easy to indoctrinate people into - just have a baby and raise it in that group. Most mammals are this way.
Does the education system injure morality? (Maybe not in terms of professors and students, but the finances create long-term difficulties).
- p39, writes that several great writers degrade one half the population - they write women this way to make them alluring, sensual.
- p41, "Standing armies..." - talks about soldiers as having lives of gallantry - "taught to please, live to please". Says women and soldiers blindly submit to authority, and both have lives of fun before they learn about virtues. Soldiers ---> women, because of how they're disciplined, educated. THIS PROVES THAT WOMEN ARE NOT NATURALLY INFERIOR.
- p42, Man's ideal for women is "sensual" - all sexual appeal, no lasting substance of character. "What nonsense!"
- Says women aggravate their own situation - they pride themselves on the power they have because of trained weaknesses, deluded by men's romantic, sentimental feelings for them.
- "It is time to effect a revolution in female manners" - time to work and labor. She feels that women take advantage of social inequities because it is easier, and she wants to put a stop to that.
Wollstonecraft herself very strict, virtuous, and rational - believed in absolute transparency, and taking people at their word. Virtue, to her, means total honesty and integrity; a republican definition of the word.
*This makes me think very differently of Western art, especially the female nude.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Mary Wollstonecraft, "Vindication of the Rights of Women," Ch.2-5, notes
*Does it strike anyone else as ironic and stupid that the most obvious advertisement next to the table of contents is an ad for weight loss?
bartleby.com/144
Ch2:
bartleby.com/144
Ch2:
"Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood."
"...let us, disregarding sensual arguments, trace what we should endeavour to make them in order to co-operate, if the expression be not too bold, with the supreme Being." - suggests that treating women as they are treated is an unchristian act, one against G-d.
Though, to reason on Rousseau's ground, if man did attain a degree of perfection of mind when his body arrived at maturity, it might be proper, in order to make a man and his wifeone, that she should rely entirely on his understanding; and the graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous. But, alas! husbands, as well as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks to early debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form—and if the blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the consequence." - There is a bit of a smirking tone here that I enjoy, even though it is still a very serious part of her argument.
- "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing." - Her frank writing voice keeps me in my toes, even 200 years after it was put to paper!
- "It has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, "that rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer.""
- In order to fulfil the duties of life, and to be able to pursue with vigour the various employments which form the moral character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion. I mean to say, that they ought not to indulge those emotions which disturb the order of society, and engross the thoughts that should be otherwise employed."
-purblind
Ch3:
- "...the first care of those mothers or fathers, who really attend to the education of females, should be, if not to strengthen the body, at least, not to destroy the constitution by mistaken notions of beauty and female excellence; nor should girls ever be allowed to imbibe the pernicious notion that a defect can, by any chemical process of reasoning, become an excellence." - Still a struggle for men and women - look at statistics about weight loss, or websites that encourage looking thin and adopting a dangerous diet. Common, still important topic: who are female role models today? Who do people think they should be, and what kind of women really get the most public, widespread publicity?
- "Why do men halt between two opinions, and expect impossibilities? Why do they expect virtue from a slave, from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?"
- "...how can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?"
Ch4:
- "Thus understanding, strictly speaking, has been denied to woman; and instinct, sublimated into wit and cunning, for the purposes of life, has been substituted in its stead."
- " I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. It is not condescension to bow to an inferiour."
- "It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness: 'Fine by defect, /and amiably weak!'"
- "'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."
- The more interesting the reading became, the fewer notes I took. Looking forward to the class discussion, though!
- "Why do men halt between two opinions, and expect impossibilities? Why do they expect virtue from a slave, from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?"
- "...how can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?"
Ch4:
- "Thus understanding, strictly speaking, has been denied to woman; and instinct, sublimated into wit and cunning, for the purposes of life, has been substituted in its stead."
- " I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. It is not condescension to bow to an inferiour."
- "It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness: 'Fine by defect, /and amiably weak!'"
- "'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."
- The more interesting the reading became, the fewer notes I took. Looking forward to the class discussion, though!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Class Notes on Cinderella
- La Traviata - parallels "Pretty Woman" in movie, almost. The ending in the former has the lady die of TB, while Julia Roberts lives happily ever after.
- REQUIREMENTS - For women: tall, thin, beautiful, and in a terrible situation - have to be in distress. For men: very, very rich and powerful.
- For women - is this a temptation for failure, not being so successful that a "prince" won't come along? It's tempting because it's easy, and the temptation itself is slimy to look at and to handle. How does a girl fashion herself into a Pretty Woman? 1) Be born with genes that keep you thin - that takes care of a lot later, 2) Be social, charming, and a good hostess; do not worry yourself over things that happen outside you, or outside your range of influence, 3) Make stupid decisions, and keep repeating those; obvious, redundant mistakes get you to that all-too-necessary "Damsel in Distress"-stage. 4) Keep thinking and seeing with blinders on - don't see how much you're missing out on, don't complain, don't argue, and at all cost, be pleasant.
- For men - the pressure to be that Prince is enormous - is it still relevant today? Of course - in a huge way. Who is expected to forfeit the equivalent of three-months salary for an engagement ring? Who traditionally proposes? Who is expected to radiate dominance, machismo, and confidence in a relationship? Who controls the upper echelons of business and government, and how do those people (men) behave? Who is supposed to ask a person out on a date, when the people involved are of opposite genders? Prince Charming has money, an education, real estate, family and social prestige, and refined manners all given to him - and he knows to treat these things with a kind of humble, "aw shucks, none of that matters"-manner. Any guy who is not given all of the above at birth is not a complete person anyway, but lacking something. People in general are born lacking something, instead of born complete with the abilities to achieve something beyond themselves.
- New version: love will save both woman and guy in the relationship - they save each other, not just one saving the other.
- Extreme Makeover: families in really difficult situations get "saved" by Ty and Crew - Cinderella-for-profit
- Memoirs of a Geisha - an adaptation of Cinderella, with Sayuri as Cinderella, Hatsumomo and Mother as Stepfamily, and Mameha as the Fairy godmother. Of course, the Prince comes in the form of the Chairman.
- Taylor Swift, "It's a Love Story" - fairy-tale passivity still there.
- "Pernicious messages persist" - pop art v. art
- Sarah Bareilles, "Fairytale" - the opposite of the above song. "don't you know she's only waiting on the next best thing", "I don't care", "I don't want your fairy-tale", "I don't want the next best thing". She's self-sufficient - she's not waiting for somebody to save her.
- Tori Amos - a song where, in the music video, she's a foot and a head and nothing else. muohio.edu/englishtechnology/bodyimage.htm - love being transformative, transforming you into a whole body/person.
- REQUIREMENTS - For women: tall, thin, beautiful, and in a terrible situation - have to be in distress. For men: very, very rich and powerful.
- For women - is this a temptation for failure, not being so successful that a "prince" won't come along? It's tempting because it's easy, and the temptation itself is slimy to look at and to handle. How does a girl fashion herself into a Pretty Woman? 1) Be born with genes that keep you thin - that takes care of a lot later, 2) Be social, charming, and a good hostess; do not worry yourself over things that happen outside you, or outside your range of influence, 3) Make stupid decisions, and keep repeating those; obvious, redundant mistakes get you to that all-too-necessary "Damsel in Distress"-stage. 4) Keep thinking and seeing with blinders on - don't see how much you're missing out on, don't complain, don't argue, and at all cost, be pleasant.
- For men - the pressure to be that Prince is enormous - is it still relevant today? Of course - in a huge way. Who is expected to forfeit the equivalent of three-months salary for an engagement ring? Who traditionally proposes? Who is expected to radiate dominance, machismo, and confidence in a relationship? Who controls the upper echelons of business and government, and how do those people (men) behave? Who is supposed to ask a person out on a date, when the people involved are of opposite genders? Prince Charming has money, an education, real estate, family and social prestige, and refined manners all given to him - and he knows to treat these things with a kind of humble, "aw shucks, none of that matters"-manner. Any guy who is not given all of the above at birth is not a complete person anyway, but lacking something. People in general are born lacking something, instead of born complete with the abilities to achieve something beyond themselves.
- New version: love will save both woman and guy in the relationship - they save each other, not just one saving the other.
- Extreme Makeover: families in really difficult situations get "saved" by Ty and Crew - Cinderella-for-profit
- Memoirs of a Geisha - an adaptation of Cinderella, with Sayuri as Cinderella, Hatsumomo and Mother as Stepfamily, and Mameha as the Fairy godmother. Of course, the Prince comes in the form of the Chairman.
- Taylor Swift, "It's a Love Story" - fairy-tale passivity still there.
- "Pernicious messages persist" - pop art v. art
- Sarah Bareilles, "Fairytale" - the opposite of the above song. "don't you know she's only waiting on the next best thing", "I don't care", "I don't want your fairy-tale", "I don't want the next best thing". She's self-sufficient - she's not waiting for somebody to save her.
- Tori Amos - a song where, in the music video, she's a foot and a head and nothing else. muohio.edu/englishtechnology/bodyimage.htm - love being transformative, transforming you into a whole body/person.
The Cinderella Myth at work
When first given this assignment, I thought of The Little Princess, a book for children written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1905. In it, a little girl enters into an English private school while her father fights in the first world war. When news comes that he is dead, Sarah goes from student to servant - partly in order to work off the debt she incurred while at the school as a student, and also so the school saves face (it wouldn't look good for them to throw her out). By the end of the novel, though, a rich man who was friends with her father ends up taking her in, and lifts her out of poverty back into a position of wealth and privilege.
Cinderella stories begin with a girl whose birth right is one of nobility and wealth. The social order that has been disrupted in the course of the story has to be re-established by the time the story ends. Sarah Crewe is meant to regain her status by the end of the novel. It's a popular story, and a popular novel, especially with young girls - Sarah is smart and kind, but she is also a "princess" - she comes from wealth, and she is meant to go back to wealth.
While looking around for images that could make this post interesting, I came across this photo of a statue on the Danube Corso, in Budapest, titled "The Little Princess". The statue is wearing a jester's cap, although I found information suggesting that vandals broke off one of the cap tips. It is a wonderful statue - so sweet and realistic. It's basically a kid playing dress-up, and caught up in daydreaming.
So I looked up more bronze statues, and came across this: Giant Hares in O'Connell Street. I had to include this because the pictures are kind of bizarre - like
characters that escaped from Alice in Wonderland. (Alice, by the way, is another Cinderella figure in literature, arguably - 
considering she returns to her world after some harrowing experiences in Wonderland).
Cinderella stories begin with a girl whose birth right is one of nobility and wealth. The social order that has been disrupted in the course of the story has to be re-established by the time the story ends. Sarah Crewe is meant to regain her status by the end of the novel. It's a popular story, and a popular novel, especially with young girls - Sarah is smart and kind, but she is also a "princess" - she comes from wealth, and she is meant to go back to wealth.
While looking around for images that could make this post interesting, I came across this photo of a statue on the Danube Corso, in Budapest, titled "The Little Princess". The statue is wearing a jester's cap, although I found information suggesting that vandals broke off one of the cap tips. It is a wonderful statue - so sweet and realistic. It's basically a kid playing dress-up, and caught up in daydreaming.
So I looked up more bronze statues, and came across this: Giant Hares in O'Connell Street. I had to include this because the pictures are kind of bizarre - like
characters that escaped from Alice in Wonderland. (Alice, by the way, is another Cinderella figure in literature, arguably - considering she returns to her world after some harrowing experiences in Wonderland).
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Class Notes on Angela Carter
"Courtship of Mr.Lyon"
Mandell's reading:
- About what it means to be human, about human life - almost like a parable: masculinity, femininity, coming to terms with violence, etc.
- There's something "real", and each "real" thing gets distorted in the story.
- Mr. Lyon is any young man coming of age, facing his manhood in or out of a relationship, and a young woman learning to be a woman in relation to a man. She is fascinated by him, but also revolting.
- Gender discourse that occurs between genders, though not always. A reaction to otherness, to reassure yourself of boundaries.
- "Masculine aggression" gets tamed - women and men have to be "tamed". Fundamental difference in these genderings, partly culturally determined, partly genetic (maybe?).
- Men find their own potential for violence horrifying, too; something has to happen in the male psyche to come to terms with its own potential for violence. For Mr. Lyon, it comes through redemption - revealing his bestiality, and being accepted for it anyway, and loved.
- Possibilities for containment through culture of homicidal violence - how does culture accomplish that? How do we, in the face of otherness, get past it?
Notes on the story "The Bloody Chamber":
- potential for corruption like potential for violence - main character had to be positioned for her talent for corruption to bloom
- Consummation equated to being stabbed - "impaled"
- Bloody Room - her locked sexual potential; a uterus; her husband's potential for violence
- Red mark - scarlet letter? What else?
- Parable of what everyone has to do to find a Piano-tuner husband - discovery of self, changing perspective, etc.
Mandell's reading:
- About what it means to be human, about human life - almost like a parable: masculinity, femininity, coming to terms with violence, etc.
- There's something "real", and each "real" thing gets distorted in the story.
- Mr. Lyon is any young man coming of age, facing his manhood in or out of a relationship, and a young woman learning to be a woman in relation to a man. She is fascinated by him, but also revolting.
- Gender discourse that occurs between genders, though not always. A reaction to otherness, to reassure yourself of boundaries.
- "Masculine aggression" gets tamed - women and men have to be "tamed". Fundamental difference in these genderings, partly culturally determined, partly genetic (maybe?).
- Men find their own potential for violence horrifying, too; something has to happen in the male psyche to come to terms with its own potential for violence. For Mr. Lyon, it comes through redemption - revealing his bestiality, and being accepted for it anyway, and loved.
- Possibilities for containment through culture of homicidal violence - how does culture accomplish that? How do we, in the face of otherness, get past it?
Notes on the story "The Bloody Chamber":
- potential for corruption like potential for violence - main character had to be positioned for her talent for corruption to bloom
- Consummation equated to being stabbed - "impaled"
- Bloody Room - her locked sexual potential; a uterus; her husband's potential for violence
- Red mark - scarlet letter? What else?
- Parable of what everyone has to do to find a Piano-tuner husband - discovery of self, changing perspective, etc.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Angela Carter's collection of short stories, "The Bloody Chamber"
I thought that the image on the left captured the moment in Carter's story, "The Bloody Chamber", when the Count hands over the keys to his new wife, so well, I wanted to include it. In the story, the protagonist often describes herself like a flower, something dainty and new, over which her husband looms like the guillotine. Her innocence clashes with his beastliness in the picture, and so they do in the story, as well. Carter writes that he is a big man, with a large, "leonine" head, etc, whose sphere of influence has so affected him that it adds to his physical presence. On the whole, though, the tale of Bluebeard is clearly recognizable under the woven story Carter created. Less so in the case of "The House of Love", where Sl
eeping Beauty is a the last of the Nosferatu vampires. Instead of embodying the traditional fairy-tale feminine ideal, this heroine is animalistic, reluctant to assume the role she was born to, and horrible. The only thing she and the traditional Sleeping Beauty have in common is that they never age - one never finds out what happens after "happily ever after" has been achieved, in any fairy-tale. Well, both also
wake up to life with a kiss - but Aurora from Disney's movie at least
survives the transition, while Carter's Sleeping Beauty dies from it. The addition of an authentic time period, right before WWI really gets going, provides a kind of texture to the story that the Grimm version completely lacks.
Carter's version of "Snow White", though, left me confused. In the Grimm version, it is the dying mother who wishes to have a daughter with skin as white as snow, hair as black as night, and lips as red as blood. In Carter's story, the father wishes for such a girl, but as an erotic substitute for his wife. His wish comes true, and just as the girl is slowly replacing his wife bit by bit (first by taking her fur coat, then her boots), she falls off the horse and dies. But wait! While she's dying, the man engages in necrophilia with her! Bottom line: what the hell?
Finally, the story I always enjoy most reading this collection is Carter's take on
"Puss-in-Boots". It's a rambunctious, bawdy, and often lewd telling that allows all the characters involved a heavy dose of personality. The ogre or monster Puss-in-Boots triumphs over at the end becomes the husband of the woman his owner lusts after, and Puss-in-Boots
operates through his owner - making this as realistic a story as any with a cat of equal intelligence to its master can be. I get a kick out of the "princess" in the story, who starts out a cookie-cutter version of every fairy-tale princess - until she happily jumps into bed with the soldier, showing a sexual appetite, deviousness, and sense of self that almost no female fai
ry-tale character wakes up to in the course of her story. This is most noticeable after the death of her husband, when she immediately takes control of the household. With the exception of a lot of dead rats, it's a fun story to read, and a very creative spin on an already-fun story.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Class Notes and Quiz
Notes:
- The Cinderella Complex - talked about The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir; about sense of passivity induced by fairy-tales. Read excerpt, "The Wish To Be Loved": a woman's divorce forces her into real independence, mostly because she has children to support, and she sees that independence wane fast after moving in with a man again. The words "pseudo independence", "facade", and "wish" made multiple appearances; so did the mantra that boys learn true independence, while girls only learn enough to get by until they can be "taken care of".
This might have applied to more women when it was originally written, but not so much in 2008. It's still present, though - but most women I know, my age and older, find that outdated kind of thinking odd, even frightening. It scares me more to think of my independence taken away, which is what "being taken care of" means to me. I am not a knick-knack needing careful dusting during its shelf-life.
- Questions: How are women "trained", as the author put it? What specific circumstances brought her to the point where she changed so much? Children want to please. It is the biggest, most satisfying thrill to make your parents laugh or feel proud of you. Children will go to great lengths to please their parents, and anyone else lucky enough to demand such respect; ergo, they make themselves open to social and cultural "training".
- Women in business - "womanness" taken away, replaced by androgyny? Emasculated. The definition of "womanness" and what it means to be a women in business do not have to be so separate. It is limiting to view business and womanness as being impossible to overlap in nature.
- How do these attitudes come to us? I think the strongest of these attitudes are inherited in the subtlest, most ingratiating ways possible - so subversive as to be hard to see, much less believe. Like germs. Curiosity and a demand to Know make people open to influences from every direction, and we are a learning species. An animal that learns with experience inevitably forms opinions, and attitudes come from those opinions; they must have some kind of survival worth, but it also seems to be how people are wired.
- Mention of Blade Runner
- "Being Prince Charming can't always be fun - can't be yourself"
- Cinderellas must dumb themselves down to qualify
- fairy-tales as a form of cultural ideology - in the dolls we buy, the movies we watch, the newspapers we read - causes wounds, forces you to be someone you're not, amputates a part of you that you can't show to the world
- can art do anything? What's the value of a re-telling? Art presents unfamiliar perspectives and different ways of looking at the same issue; it's an expression of the individual in a defined community, thereby further defining that individual as well as his or her community. Re-telling a story might mean the listeners come away with something they wouldn't have if they had just read it. Maybe the brain is tuned to listen for different threads in oral stories. In hearing it, the storyteller's presentation and tone, the gist of the story, and one's immediate reactions to it are foremost, instead of a literary analysis or brief mental summary of a text.
Carter's re-telling of Cinderella:
- Mother has more agency, and chooses to be more self-sacrificing
- Cinderella runs from home straight to another mother
- Final lessons through feeding, clothing, etc.
- Does ending negate what mother did?
- Reader projects own experiences on a text - varying results come out of it
QUIZ:
In the re-telling of fairy-tales, does art help counteract ideology (ie, being wounded by wishes)?
Yes. Taking a known story and treating it as a skeleton that needs fleshing out both shows and inspires creativity. It is a creative effort that can go in any direction - by the end, the story might not even resemble what the Grimm brothers recorded two hundred years ago. For example, any of Angela Carter's stories are clearly based on well-known fairy-tales - Sleeping Beauty, Puss-in-Boots, etc. - but her treatment of them results in very different stuff. For example, her Sleeping Beauty was a pretty girl - a thin, pale girl, who was also the last Vampire of a long line of Vampires. She nearly eats her Prince Charming, who is nothing more than a hunky young guy looking for a place to rest because his travels as a tourist took him a little too far out of the way. Avoiding fairy-tales gives them a false power, as though they will make the next generation relapse into antiquated models of thought. Using them as material to be altered and fitted at will puts them in their places.
Notes on Quiz:
- Changes biases
- Artistic nature of re-telling the story provides a beauty that compensates for the more realistic, mixed bad-good endings
- Personal experiencing of it is a way to counteract ideology
- Can you live without an ideology? Constantly building, re-structuring? Acts as an additional tool?
- Fairy-tales said to be universally applicable - changing them, and having different results as a consequence, is okay
- The Cinderella Complex - talked about The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir; about sense of passivity induced by fairy-tales. Read excerpt, "The Wish To Be Loved": a woman's divorce forces her into real independence, mostly because she has children to support, and she sees that independence wane fast after moving in with a man again. The words "pseudo independence", "facade", and "wish" made multiple appearances; so did the mantra that boys learn true independence, while girls only learn enough to get by until they can be "taken care of".
This might have applied to more women when it was originally written, but not so much in 2008. It's still present, though - but most women I know, my age and older, find that outdated kind of thinking odd, even frightening. It scares me more to think of my independence taken away, which is what "being taken care of" means to me. I am not a knick-knack needing careful dusting during its shelf-life.
- Questions: How are women "trained", as the author put it? What specific circumstances brought her to the point where she changed so much? Children want to please. It is the biggest, most satisfying thrill to make your parents laugh or feel proud of you. Children will go to great lengths to please their parents, and anyone else lucky enough to demand such respect; ergo, they make themselves open to social and cultural "training".
- Women in business - "womanness" taken away, replaced by androgyny? Emasculated. The definition of "womanness" and what it means to be a women in business do not have to be so separate. It is limiting to view business and womanness as being impossible to overlap in nature.
- How do these attitudes come to us? I think the strongest of these attitudes are inherited in the subtlest, most ingratiating ways possible - so subversive as to be hard to see, much less believe. Like germs. Curiosity and a demand to Know make people open to influences from every direction, and we are a learning species. An animal that learns with experience inevitably forms opinions, and attitudes come from those opinions; they must have some kind of survival worth, but it also seems to be how people are wired.
- Mention of Blade Runner
- "Being Prince Charming can't always be fun - can't be yourself"
- Cinderellas must dumb themselves down to qualify
- fairy-tales as a form of cultural ideology - in the dolls we buy, the movies we watch, the newspapers we read - causes wounds, forces you to be someone you're not, amputates a part of you that you can't show to the world
- can art do anything? What's the value of a re-telling? Art presents unfamiliar perspectives and different ways of looking at the same issue; it's an expression of the individual in a defined community, thereby further defining that individual as well as his or her community. Re-telling a story might mean the listeners come away with something they wouldn't have if they had just read it. Maybe the brain is tuned to listen for different threads in oral stories. In hearing it, the storyteller's presentation and tone, the gist of the story, and one's immediate reactions to it are foremost, instead of a literary analysis or brief mental summary of a text.
Carter's re-telling of Cinderella:
- Mother has more agency, and chooses to be more self-sacrificing
- Cinderella runs from home straight to another mother
- Final lessons through feeding, clothing, etc.
- Does ending negate what mother did?
- Reader projects own experiences on a text - varying results come out of it
QUIZ:
In the re-telling of fairy-tales, does art help counteract ideology (ie, being wounded by wishes)?
Yes. Taking a known story and treating it as a skeleton that needs fleshing out both shows and inspires creativity. It is a creative effort that can go in any direction - by the end, the story might not even resemble what the Grimm brothers recorded two hundred years ago. For example, any of Angela Carter's stories are clearly based on well-known fairy-tales - Sleeping Beauty, Puss-in-Boots, etc. - but her treatment of them results in very different stuff. For example, her Sleeping Beauty was a pretty girl - a thin, pale girl, who was also the last Vampire of a long line of Vampires. She nearly eats her Prince Charming, who is nothing more than a hunky young guy looking for a place to rest because his travels as a tourist took him a little too far out of the way. Avoiding fairy-tales gives them a false power, as though they will make the next generation relapse into antiquated models of thought. Using them as material to be altered and fitted at will puts them in their places.
Notes on Quiz:
- Changes biases
- Artistic nature of re-telling the story provides a beauty that compensates for the more realistic, mixed bad-good endings
- Personal experiencing of it is a way to counteract ideology
- Can you live without an ideology? Constantly building, re-structuring? Acts as an additional tool?
- Fairy-tales said to be universally applicable - changing them, and having different results as a consequence, is okay
Re-tellings
Reading Jeanette Winterson's introduction from Weight made me think of a Far Side comic where all the Greek gods are sitting down in a movie theater. Zeus leans over to whatever god is next to him and hisses, "I hate it when Atlas sits ahead of me!" Since I couldn't find that, I used a Far Side cartoon I thought was still moderately funny:
Atlas is an interesting character, but not one that gets a lot of excitement out of casual readers of Greek mythology. His seems like the most boring job around - getting to hold the planet on his shoulders is just a lot of standing around and balancing. That Winterson could interpret the myth in a way that excited interest shows how much the reader's relationship to the material matters. She could have just as easily connected with another myth, but for that time, and at that moment, being the writer and the person she was, she chose Atlas. There were several quotes I really liked, and included below:
"Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important."
"Such a phenomenon [of wanting art so grounded in reality, it lacks imagination] points to a terror of the inner life, of the sublime, of the poetic, of the non-material, of the contemplative."
Unless it's a commercial hit or means big money, artistic efforts are negotiable. A lot of people would agree with cutting public spending on big art projects for public spaces, such as statuary, and "serious" subjects such as science and math are often given priority over music and art in public schools. Artists get little support, monetary or otherwise, and even less encouragement. Unless a signed document shows you have earned a living wage with your work, it's worthless to all but you. That is the risk, as well as compromise artists make when they pursue their work, be it writing, painting, or sculpting. My thoughts drifted more and more in this direction after reading Winterson's introduction, especially after the two quotes shown above - its a meaty subject to bat around.
Second, Angela Carter's short (short) story, "Ashputtle: or, The Mother's Ghost", was in the same area as her other adaptations of classical fairy-tales. It was creepy, visceral, and unusual. She describes Cinderella as a child "charred, a little bit charred, like a stick half-burned and picked off the fire." No mention of stepsisters or a father; the action occurs between Cinderella and a stepmother. The main character, though, is her mother's ghost. Beyond her death and the benevolence she shows as a good soul in heaven, the mother doesn't factor much in other Cinderella stories. Carter's story has the mother making sacrifices and suffering in her attempts to raise her child without a physical presence to offer protection or guidance. The ending is similar - Cinderella goes off with a guy at the end, when she's prettied up, and leaves the stepmother with her jaw, gaping, on the ground. After Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", her special re-telling of Puss-in-Boots, and her take on "Sleeping Beauty", this abbreviated, spare story took me by surprise. I expected a more sweeping story arch. This was refreshingly brief and eccentric.
Atlas is an interesting character, but not one that gets a lot of excitement out of casual readers of Greek mythology. His seems like the most boring job around - getting to hold the planet on his shoulders is just a lot of standing around and balancing. That Winterson could interpret the myth in a way that excited interest shows how much the reader's relationship to the material matters. She could have just as easily connected with another myth, but for that time, and at that moment, being the writer and the person she was, she chose Atlas. There were several quotes I really liked, and included below:
"Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important."
"Such a phenomenon [of wanting art so grounded in reality, it lacks imagination] points to a terror of the inner life, of the sublime, of the poetic, of the non-material, of the contemplative."
Unless it's a commercial hit or means big money, artistic efforts are negotiable. A lot of people would agree with cutting public spending on big art projects for public spaces, such as statuary, and "serious" subjects such as science and math are often given priority over music and art in public schools. Artists get little support, monetary or otherwise, and even less encouragement. Unless a signed document shows you have earned a living wage with your work, it's worthless to all but you. That is the risk, as well as compromise artists make when they pursue their work, be it writing, painting, or sculpting. My thoughts drifted more and more in this direction after reading Winterson's introduction, especially after the two quotes shown above - its a meaty subject to bat around.
Second, Angela Carter's short (short) story, "Ashputtle: or, The Mother's Ghost", was in the same area as her other adaptations of classical fairy-tales. It was creepy, visceral, and unusual. She describes Cinderella as a child "charred, a little bit charred, like a stick half-burned and picked off the fire." No mention of stepsisters or a father; the action occurs between Cinderella and a stepmother. The main character, though, is her mother's ghost. Beyond her death and the benevolence she shows as a good soul in heaven, the mother doesn't factor much in other Cinderella stories. Carter's story has the mother making sacrifices and suffering in her attempts to raise her child without a physical presence to offer protection or guidance. The ending is similar - Cinderella goes off with a guy at the end, when she's prettied up, and leaves the stepmother with her jaw, gaping, on the ground. After Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", her special re-telling of Puss-in-Boots, and her take on "Sleeping Beauty", this abbreviated, spare story took me by surprise. I expected a more sweeping story arch. This was refreshingly brief and eccentric.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Class Notes, 1/14/2009
Content of fairy tales - what tales tell
Fairy tales might express what kids feel - mayhap they think adults are mean, violent, and that their world is dangerous, and these stories provide a release for them. More than plausible - likeliest reason for persistent violence, evil v. good, black-and-white types of stories.
Google Image search: Monsters... nothing of interest. Google Image search Pan's Labyrinth - bingo! The Pale Man is arguably the most realistic, nightmarish character in cinema to date, and one that can be supposed to accurately represent what children fear. It's a thing that will chew you up like strips of beef jerky, and it's pure evil, driven by hunger.
Art can overcome and/or transform violence - encourages empathy; tells in advance what the consequences are; externalized monsters help tame the monster within, and art satisfies a different hunger, or changes its focus (good thing? bad thing?).
What is art in relation to us as humans?
Pondering...
Fairy tales might express what kids feel - mayhap they think adults are mean, violent, and that their world is dangerous, and these stories provide a release for them. More than plausible - likeliest reason for persistent violence, evil v. good, black-and-white types of stories.
Google Image search: Monsters... nothing of interest. Google Image search Pan's Labyrinth - bingo! The Pale Man is arguably the most realistic, nightmarish character in cinema to date, and one that can be supposed to accurately represent what children fear. It's a thing that will chew you up like strips of beef jerky, and it's pure evil, driven by hunger.
Art can overcome and/or transform violence - encourages empathy; tells in advance what the consequences are; externalized monsters help tame the monster within, and art satisfies a different hunger, or changes its focus (good thing? bad thing?).
What is art in relation to us as humans?
Pondering...
Cinderella, Cinderella
Reading the Grimm version of "Cinderella" became an exercise in studying the translation of the German story to English rather than studying the story's content. I've read the German version several times, and the way it is written in German must have been almost exactly the way the Grimm brothers first heard it. They, like anyone in Europe at the time, had probably heard a dozen version of the same - involving glass, gold, and fur slippers - but they chose this version to represent the tale. I think they wrote it as closely to the way it was originally told by a storyteller, not from memory, because their job was one of collecting what they saw as pieces of a culture. It was not just about publishing an entertaining collection of stories. Since it's a simple story, moved by plot instead of character development, the translations read very similarly - but it's a European story, and very obviously not American.
Anne Sexton's poem, "Cinderella", read like an entertaining critique. The first line, "You always read about it", sets the poem up as containing subject matter that the reader will be familiar with, no matter how the poet treats the writing. Lines such as, "Or the nursemaid,/ some luscious sweet from Denmark", and "She slept on the sooty hearth each night/ and walked around looking like Al Jolson", are both funny and sardonic. There are odd connotations to some of the lines: when the prince looks for Cinderella, Sexton writes, "Now he would find whom the shoe fit/ and find his strange dancing girl for keeps;..." - the words "dancing girl" made me think of a gypsy entertainer, which, whether or not others thought something similarly, is an odd thing to think of. When Cinderella fits the shoe, it fits, "... like a love letter into its envelope". At the end, the newlyweds are compared to Bobbsey Twins - my notes read, "as in, after the "happily ever after", they freeze and remain the same? Kind of macabre". It was a creepy, dry treatment of an otherwise bland and sunny fairy-tale. Beyond the material being the same (one text evolved directly from the other), the writing styles, and the point of the poem and the story, are entirely different.
Anne Sexton's poem, "Cinderella", read like an entertaining critique. The first line, "You always read about it", sets the poem up as containing subject matter that the reader will be familiar with, no matter how the poet treats the writing. Lines such as, "Or the nursemaid,/ some luscious sweet from Denmark", and "She slept on the sooty hearth each night/ and walked around looking like Al Jolson", are both funny and sardonic. There are odd connotations to some of the lines: when the prince looks for Cinderella, Sexton writes, "Now he would find whom the shoe fit/ and find his strange dancing girl for keeps;..." - the words "dancing girl" made me think of a gypsy entertainer, which, whether or not others thought something similarly, is an odd thing to think of. When Cinderella fits the shoe, it fits, "... like a love letter into its envelope". At the end, the newlyweds are compared to Bobbsey Twins - my notes read, "as in, after the "happily ever after", they freeze and remain the same? Kind of macabre". It was a creepy, dry treatment of an otherwise bland and sunny fairy-tale. Beyond the material being the same (one text evolved directly from the other), the writing styles, and the point of the poem and the story, are entirely different.
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